Development and Evaluation of Helicopter Autopilot Modes for Ship-deck Landing Maneuver

Abstract

Helicopter ship-deck landings remain a daunting task for the pilots as well as for the automatic flight control systems due to endless factors including but not limited to high sea states, highly irregular ship motion and ship air wake and turbulence. The proposed study presents classical and augmented autopilot modes in order to perform an Automatic Ship Deck Landing. The developed autopilot modes are managed by a fully automated ship deck landing controller, enabling to perform the entire maneuver for a manned or unmanned helicopter, from the stabilised level flight to the over the deck hover and final landing phase. The complete landing maneuver is split into five different phases depicting five mission task elements. In order to perform these different phases, a Transition Down auto-pilot mode has been developed, enabling to switch between appropriate autopilot modes and instructions depending on the current phase along the entire maneuver. This automatic transition down mode has been tested through off-line simulation tool integrating a maritime simulation environment. Furthermore, the maneuver has been also evaluated by two helicopter test pilots during the design process to evaluate its effectiveness in simulating a realistic operational scenario. Simulation results indicate improved task performance and improved perceived safety for the overall landing mission using the Automatic Ship Deck Landing mode.